


Exposed

by mysticanni



Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: Art School, Nudity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:55:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24456301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysticanni/pseuds/mysticanni
Summary: Freddie is a nude model for an art class.Freddie Mercury Weekend 2020!Prompt - That Time Freddie Was A Nude Model
Comments: 13
Kudos: 25
Collections: Freddie Mercury Weekend 2020!





	Exposed

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Is This The Real Life - That Time Freddie Was A Nude Model 
> 
> I know nothing about art so if you are an artist I hope you don't find the mistakes too hideous if you choose to read this.

Exposed 

The college was quite different at night without chattering students thronging the corridors. Deprived of the vibrancy of the people who used the building the flaws of the structure seemed exposed: scuffed paintwork, cracked panes of glass, the hollow clang of drips falling into a metal bucket positioned under a leaking section of the roof. Freddie’s footsteps echoed down the empty hallway.

Although he had been to the room he was heading for many times before he still felt anxious in case he had taken down the wrong room number or the wrong date or the wrong time. For a brief moment he wondered if he’d get away with saying he had got the place or the time or the date wrong and scuttling off home. He knew he would not get away with that though. His tutor, Neil, took this class and he would know that Freddie had just lost his nerve. He told himself that he never had to do this again if he hated it. Yes, the money was good – five pounds cash in hand for just a couple of hours work – but the money was good precisely because the job wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. 

Freddie had never really thought about the life models he had drawn during his own classes. He saw them as an amalgamation of shapes and angles and spaces between limbs. He had concentrated on the curve of a breast or the tilt of a nose. They were all a mixture of light and shade, the marks on his paper forming a depiction of a person. It seemed shameful, now, that he had not considered their lives, their reality. 

His hands felt clammy as the classroom door drew closer. He fiddled with the strap of his satchel which he had crammed a robe into, as instructed by Neil. He knew how it worked, of course. He would remove his clothes in the ‘changing room’ which was simply a large cupboard and slip on the robe before walking into the centre of the room when he would remove the robe and position his naked body in the pose Neil wanted his students to capture. Some models didn’t bother wearing a robe. Freddie couldn’t imagine ever being that comfortable parading nude in front of strangers. 

“There you are,” Neil said, sticking his head around the classroom door. “The class haven’t arrived yet, so if you like you can get into position before they come in. All you have to do is sit on a chair today. I’ll make it as comfortable a pose as possible, since you are new to this. Thank you so much for doing it. None of my usual models could make this time slot.”

Freddie mumbled something in response. He wasn’t sure what he had said but Neil was not staring at him so he assumed he had sounded relatively normal. He stumbled to the cupboard/changing room and began to remove his clothes with shaking hands, thinking it was probably too late to back out now. His elbow struck a shelf and the momentary pain brought him back from the edge of panic. All he had to do was sit on a chair.

He had sneaked his pale yellow fake silk robe out of the house and the colour and familiar faint scent of the washing powder they used was soothing. He folded his clothes neatly and left them on the chair provided then took a deep breath and emerged into the classroom, like a caterpillar emerging from a cocoon transformed into a gorgeous butterfly, he told himself. If the building seemed exposed by losing its vibrant inhabitants then Freddie told himself that by shedding his clothes, that false finery, he was exposing his gloriousness to the world. 

He almost convinced himself. But he was still trembling slightly as he left the cupboard.

Apart from Neil the room was still empty but he thought he could hear voices in the corridor now. The room was warm and stuffy but Freddie was glad of the heat, at least.

The desks and chairs were arranged in a semi-circle facing a solitary chair which had been slightly elevated by way of placing it on top of a wooden pallet. Freddie hoped his bare feet were not about to get splinters. He also hoped the structure was more stable than it looked.

Neil instructed him to hang his robe over the back of the chair and he did so, flushing slightly as he uncovered himself. Neil simply told him in a matter of fact way how he wanted Freddie to sit. “Face forwards, please, with your right leg crossed over your left leg and if you could just place your right hand on your right knee... yes, just like that... and then leave your left arm hanging loose... Perfect, thank you, are you comfortable?” 

“Yes,” Freddie nodded. He started as the door banged open. He had his back to the door but reflected that the chair and the robe draped over it would cover his arse and his long loose hair would mean not too much skin was visible, although, of course, the whole point was for them to see him naked.

“Welcome, everyone, come in,” Neil greeted his students, “Good evening, Angela. Hi, Doreen, how are you today? Nice to see you, Linda.”

As the seats in front of Freddie began to fill he observed that most of the class were female. They were also all around his mother’s age as far as he could tell. He tried to imagine his mother taking an art evening class and couldn’t.

He wondered what motivated these women to venture out on a dark and wet Monday night in October to learn how to draw. Some of them appeared to know each other. Were they here to socialise? Why had they picked this class? Did they just want to see naked men other than their husbands? Why not take, say, conversational French? 

Neil was introducing him. He was the first live model they had encountered apparently although the course had been running for a few weeks already. He greeted them in a soft voice.

Did they tell their families about the class? Did they mention the nude models? Did they vaguely mention they were taking art lessons? “I’m really only doing it to keep Doreen company.” Did their families think of pastel coloured landscapes or bowls of fruit? Did their families take an interest? Did they ask to see their work?

Freddie had not told anyone about this job. He was not ashamed of it, he thought now. He was helping people learn. It was an honest job. Yet all the rules of society dictated that being naked in a public place was shameful. The shame was hard-wired into everyone, he suspected. Perhaps it was more accurate to say that he was trying not to be ashamed of it.

He wondered if it was a similar impulse that caused him to disassociate himself from the nude models he drew. It was shameful that they were naked. So he deliberately didn’t think of them as undressed people. Presumably he was not alone in that but he was not sure how he felt about the idea that some of the people looking at him now were viewing him as an object, even if they were barely aware that they were doing it. Perhaps looking beyond the lines and angles of a figure was what gave some people’s drawings more character. Freddie felt his sketches of people didn’t leap off the page they way some of his classmate’s did. He resolved to try to look at things differently now that he had experienced the other side of the artist-model relationship. Maybe this would enrich his work.

If it hadn’t been for a draught coming from somewhere it would have been surprisingly easy to forget he was naked. Goose pimples erupted on his skin. His mind wandered. It was peaceful here. Every now and then Neil gave someone a piece of advice or an instruction in a low voice. Other than that the only sounds were the ticking clock on the wall, the swish of pencils on paper and the occasional clearing of a throat. 

The class seemed absorbed in their work, their heads bent over their drawings. They looked at Freddie once in a while but Freddie thought only one of them – the only male, younger than the rest of the group – was actually seeing him.

Freddie knew he was good at designing things. He could create posters and excelled at tasks like creating an imaginary book cover or album sleeve. Of course he wanted to be able to capture the essence of a person and he rarely managed it to his own satisfaction. There was always a gap between the image in his head and what he could produce on the page.

He supposed he could get a job designing for an advertising agency or illustrating books, perhaps. He was not passionate about that, however. He didn’t feel the same thrill he got when music coursed through his mind, new and all his. And yet the music seemed locked away, somehow.

They took a break halfway through the class. Freddie was glad to have the opportunity to stretch and don his robe and stand near one of the radiators to warm up. He felt guilty as he had often been irritated by these breaks when he was focussed on a drawing during his own classes, seeking the elusive stroke that would render the two dimensional person on the paper more lifelike.

The class broke into little groups, some of them going to the vending machine in the corridor for drinks and snacks. The man Freddie had considered observant had wandered out of the classroom and Freddie paused by his desk as he moved towards the radiator and looked at his work. He was jolted by how good it was. There Freddie was captured on the page, so realistically depicted that the picture of him looked like it might speak at any moment.

“Sam’s good, isn’t he?” Neil had seen him looking. He handed Freddie a Styrofoam cup of tea from the vending machine. Freddie nodded and thanked Neil for the tea. “He’s an apprentice mechanic,” Neil remarked, “but art is his passion.”

“He’s very talented,” Freddie murmured. Would he have to take a job he was not passionate about too? Would he only feel alive on those evenings and weekends he could devote to music? What did that do to a person over time?

As he resumed his seat Freddie thought about the band he had seen the other evening. He had joined a group of his classmates and seen a few new bands at a local pub. One of the other students on the course, Tim Staffell, was in one of the bands playing. They were called 1984. They were good.

Freddie wondered how it felt to have that kind of camaraderie; that sense of belonging a band would confer. How would it feel to be able to talk to other people with similar or shared musical tastes and interests? Would talking to someone else about music unlock the ideas inside of him; the ones that he seemed frustratingly unable to express?

Tim had told him that their guitarist, Brian, wrote his own songs. Freddie wondered what it would be like to talk to him. Could he explain how to free the music that was trapped in Freddie’s mind?

He had to try, Freddie thought. He had to at least try to live a real life, a passionate life.

Neil handed him his pay when he emerged, re-dressed, from the cupboard, feeling different, somehow from the Freddie who had gone in there before the class. Perhaps he had undergone a transformation. Maybe he had turned into a butterfly. “Same time next week,” Neil offered.

“Yes, dear,” Freddie agreed, “I enjoyed it,” he added.


End file.
